BREMERTON — Kitsap residents will soon have a safe way to dispose of unused pills crammed in their medicine cabinets.

Kitsap Public Health District is taking public comments through Dec. 5 on a proposed medication take-back program that will establish secure drop boxes at pharmacies, medical facilities and police stations. The program could be operational by early March and will be paid for by pharmaceutical companies.

Jan Brower with Kitsap Public Health said residents who can't access a drop box will be able to request packaging to mail in medications. Currently, only law enforcement agencies collect unwanted prescription drugs in the county.

The medication return program has been in development for the last year, under an ordinance passed by the Kitsap Public Health board. The district modeled its ordinance on similar legislation enacted in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties.

The ordinance requires pharmaceutical companies that manufacture drugs sold in the county to pay for a drug take-back program that ensures unwanted medications are collected and destroyed following federal and state guidelines. Drug companies have worked with a contractor to establish take-back programs in other Puget Sound counties. The same contractor, MED-Project, submitted the proposed plan for Kitsap.

Brower said it made sense to work with a company that already has a collection system established in the region.

"Hopefully there will be some economies of scale," she said.

Under the proposed plan, MED-Project will promote the take-back locations, and educate the public on safe storage and disposal of medications. Drugs collected from the drop boxes will be incinerated at a facility in Indiana.

One goal of the medication take back program is prevent prescription drugs from falling into the wrong hands. Drug overdoses have surpassed vehicle collisions as the leading cause of accidental deaths in the county. The Washington Poison Center received nearly 500 calls from Kitsap in 2015 involving accidental medication poisoning in children 6 and younger.